O Button Tree, O Button Tree

You may have noticed in yesterday's post that there was a picture of my button tree. The idea for this came primarily from Sarah's tree, but I saw one posted later here. I like Sarah's best, though! I bought the supplies way back when Sarah posted her instructions, but finally finished the darn thing yesterday.
I used a 4" x 9" styrofoam cone for my tree. I didn't have any pink fabric so I bought a fat quarter from JoAnn's for $1.49 and just pinned it on like Sarah suggested. I also did a base layer of white buttons held on with straight pins, and I had to use a bead on almost all of those because the holes on the buttons were larger than the pin heads. Then I started the top layers.

I loved Sarah's pastel color scheme and I had already been kicking around the idea of a pink & turquoise Christmas decorating theme so that made my color choice easy. I thought I had plenty of buttons in those colors, but I was wrong! I had to go to JoAnn's and buy a couple of bags of buttons. The large bags of pink were the very bold hot pink rather than pale pink, and I wasn't able to find any turquoise so I had to settle for a very pale aqua, and I don't love how that turned out. I think it would have looked better overall if the blue had been bolder, or the pinks softer. I used hot pink & turquoise pearl-headed pins and some larger white pearl-headed corsage pins as well. I also found a bag of really pretty turquoise fake pearls at Wal-Mart so I used those instead of the white pearls I bought at JoAnn's. I also had some bright pink faceted iridescent beads in my stash that I used but I'm not sure how well I really like them. Plastic faceted beads have a tendency to look too "crazy church bazaar craft" to me, so I'm not sure how I feel about them on my tree.

I filled the tree as full as I could--there is literally no place left to stick a pin! For my topper I used a snowflake-shaped pin from JoAnn's that is set with little turquoise gems. I secured it with a couple of the corsage pins through the pin bar. The skirt is this cool ruffled trim that Lisa-Gabrielle sent me in the craft swap. It's perfect for this! I pinned it into the bottom of the tree with a few more straight pins. The base for my tree is a very cool Haeger pottery planter that I thrifted for just $.50! At the dollar store I found this handy little piece of floral foam that's shaped to go in a pot with a tapered bottom and flat top, so that's sitting in the planter and the tree is sitting atop it. Looking at the photos it looks like it needs to be raised up about a half an inch because the ruffled trim is getting squished!

So that's my button tree. I have to admit that I'm not sure how I feel about how it came out. There's something about it that's just a bit off that's keeping me from really loving it, but I'm not entirely sure what the problem is! Maybe I need to use some white buttons on the top layer, or maybe I need to ditch the pink faceted beads, or find some bolder turquoise buttons so they balance the bright pink better. Not sure, but the good thing is that I didn't use any glue so I can just pull the pins out and rearrange all I want! I do think a red and green tree would be charming, or even an all-white one with lots of different shaped buttons. Those will have to wait until another year however, as this year I am DONE with the buttons! No more!